“Mean?” he hesitated, wondering. “Why should it mean anything? Has not a gentleman a right to wear a ring if his fancy runs that way?”
“Oh, yes, of course; some rings; but no ordinary gentleman has a right to wear that one.”
“But suppose I am not an ordinary gentleman?” he pursued. “Suppose I have a title and bear arms, have I not a right to engrave those arms upon gold and wear them on my finger?”
She looked at him very seriously from out her deep-set, long-lashed eyes of purplish blue, and then she said:
“But it is the ring of the Crown Prince. And you are not the Crown Prince. If you were you could not be my uncle.”
Grey’s heart leaped. His decision had been confirmed. She was not trying to put him on a throne to which he had no more right than those workmen who were repairing the stone margin of the great canal a hundred yards away. Yet, at the same time, she had filled him with a new perplexity. It was evident that the ring was quite familiar to her. Therefore it could hardly be von Einhard’s, and Lindenwald’s assertion must not only have been false but knowingly false, and with an object. If the Fraülein von Altdorf knew the ring as the Crown Prince’s ring, Lindenwald must also have known it as such. It was for that reason he did not wish Grey to keep it. He feared, probably, just such a revelation as had come about. These points were plain enough, but the whole intricate problem was growing more and more involved. Its likeness to a maze again recurred. With every effort to extricate himself he seemed to get further and more bewilderingly entangled. And once more he was tempted to leave the path, which seemed to turn and turn again on itself, and to cut his way through thicket and underbrush regardless of consequences.
“What a wise Fraülein it is!” he replied, after a pause. “What you say is very true. If I am the Crown Prince I am not your uncle, and if I am your uncle I am not the Crown Prince. Now which would you prefer to have me?”
“Oh, for your sake,” she answered, quickly, “I’d rather you were heir to the throne; but for my sake I’d rather you were my uncle.”
“But not being able to be both, suppose you should learn that I am neither?” he queried, laughing.
“But you are,” she protested, with conviction. “You are my uncle, that is a fact.”